Friday, September 21, 2012

The Three-Legged Cat

This week, the book I picked for book talk was The Three-Legged Cat by Margaret Mahy. This book is a wonderful story about Tom, a three-legged cat who lives with the uptight Daisy Gimble. Ms. Gimble wishes that Tom would sleep more and eat less. Tom on the other hand wishes to explore the world like Ms. Gimble's wandering brother Danny. When Danny comes to visit, with his God-awful orange and molting Russian hat, he accidentally leaves with Tom on his head and his hat is left "sleeping" quietly on Ms. Gimble's couch. When Danny figures out what happens, He is filled with joy at the thought of having not only a warmer hat, but a companion for his adventures and Tom is ecstatic at the thought of his dream of adventure being fulfilled. Likewise, Ms. Gimble is much happier having a cat that only sleeps and can not "eat her out of house and home."

The literary elements in this book are easy to find.

Point of View: The book is being read in the point of view of a narrator.
Setting: Varies; It begins in Ms. Gimble's house, ends in different parts of the world.
Characters: There are three main characters: Tom, Daisy Gimble and Danny Gimble.
Plot: Tom wants to go on an adventure. Danny, Ms. Gimble's adventurous brother comes by unexpectedly. He accidentally leaves with Tom on his head instead of his hat. All of the characters are much happier with the switch of the hat for the cat.
Theme: Don't judge a book by it's cover (an adventurous three-legged cat) and always follow your dreams.

I found a lesson plan that can go with this book from Weston Woods that has a couple of great ideas of how to incorporate this into multiple subjects in the classroom. In addition I wanted to include the a little movie representation of the book as well. Enjoy! :)


Lesson Plan from Weston Woods                                            
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3 comments:

  1. Ashley RushSeptember 23, 2012 at 2:55 PM

    I totally agree with the literary elements being easy to point out. That is good for kids to do this, i remember always doing this back in the day! But, it still helps me today! lol That can easily be an assignment to do with kids. Very good, i think that the theme is good for kids to always be taught and to be remined of.

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  2. UnknownSeptember 24, 2012 at 8:15 PM

    The plot was very cute! The story was very fun and enjoyable throughout! I loved the theme too because I think we all judge certain things all the time without really getting to know about them. It's a very good lesson to learn for later on in life. I think kids would love this book so it would probably be very useful during free reading or something like that!

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  3. EnRica MadridSeptember 27, 2012 at 2:44 PM

    I thought this book was really funny and I think kids would get a kick out of it just seeing the cover because they tend to laugh at things like "a three legged cat". It was a really great book and I liked how you pointed out the literary elements because since they are so easy to define with this book, it would be a great book to utilize for literary elements in the primary grades. I checked out that site and thought it was really great!

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